Diana OKs 2 armed deputies for BOCES

School resource officers return

GOSHEN — Orange County Executive Ed Diana has approved the placement of two sheriff's deputies at the Orange Ulster BOCES campus in Goshen in the wake of school safety concerns raised by the Newtown, Conn., shootings.

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By JOHN SULLIVAN

recordonline.com

By JOHN SULLIVAN

Posted Jan. 3, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By JOHN SULLIVAN
Posted Jan. 3, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

GOSHEN — Orange County Executive Ed Diana has approved the placement of two sheriff's deputies at the Orange Ulster BOCES campus in Goshen in the wake of school safety concerns raised by the Newtown, Conn., shootings.

Two armed school resource officers from the sheriff's office began work at BOCES Wednesday, six days after Diana met with state Sen. Bill Larkin, R-C-Cornwall-on-Hudson, representatives of the sheriff's office and several school districts and Terry Olivo, the chief operating officer for BOCES. The group plans to meet again on Tuesday to further discuss potential steps to improve security in the county's schools.

Diana said that discussions about sending deputies to BOCES predated the Newtown shootings.

"Certainly after Newtown, we needed to speed that up," he said of the talks.

After meeting again with Olivo on the issue, Diana spoke with the sheriff's office, which also supported the idea. Undersheriff Ken Jones said he viewed the proposal as a pragmatic step, considering that students attending Orange Ulster BOCES come from multiple school districts.

"It's different from saying that the sheriff should project deputies into all of the schools in the county," he said.

The deputies assigned to BOCES are the same two officers who worked there before being pulled last year. The removal was triggered by Diana's demand to reduce overtime in the sheriff's office, Jones explained.

This time, Diana has agreed to hire two new deputies to cover for the vacancies created by the SRO positions. The county will hire the deputies from the police academy's current class, which graduates in the spring.

BOCES will reimburse the SROs' full salary and benefits, totaling $90,000 to $115,000 each, Jones said.

SRO officers are nothing new to schools, where they have traditionally served dual purposes of education and crime prevention. Olivo drew a clear distinction between such officers and the type of armed security called for by some in the wake of the Newtown shootings. He added that armed police security failed to prevent the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

"This should not be misinterpreted to mean that armed guards in school are necessarily the most effective way to prevent what occurred in Newtown," Olivo said.